Experts appeal to individual responsibility

Amid the latest jump in coronavirus cases, health experts are renewing their appeal to people to act responsibly.

“There is no need to panic, just for each of us to increase individual protection measures,” said Matina Pagoni, president of the Athens-Piraeus Hospital Doctors’ Association (EINAP). “After two years of the pandemic, people now know when and where to wear a mask; they do not need our advice,” she added, noting that “the virus is here, the subvariants are here,” and, bemoaning that dispute the rapid increase in cases, “the masks do not come out.”

After a lull in the infection rate it has of late risen sharply, and coincided with the lifting of restrictions on June 1. 

According to Costas Daloukas, president of the Association of Private Pediatricians of Greece, his phone has not stopped ringing in the past 10 days.

“These are parents who inform me that everyone is sick, as a family,” he said, stressing that the situation is out of control as “there is neither rule nor control.” 

He is also convinced that many patients do not even declare their infection or quarantine.

“I think the actual number of cases is higher,” he said

Since June 21, the daily cases have exceeded 10,000, but the number of deaths and hospitalizations in ICUs remain “relatively low.” However, admissions to Covid beds in hospitals are constantly increasing.

“Unfortunately, not even a recent infection with the Omicron variant protects against reinfection with new transmissible strains of the virus. Therefore we are all again candidates for participation in the virus transmission chains – vaccinated and recently infected, all of us,” underlined Ioannis Prassas, a scientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.